Press Room

A new documentary makes the controversial case that a political cocktail of big corporate money and racially charged sentiments has helped fuel the rise of the tea party. And squarely behind that movement, the film argues, are the Koch brothers.

Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers behind the conservative super PAC Americans for Prosperity, are the featured players in “Citizen Koch”, a new documentary about corporate influence in politics.

The dark lessons this engrossing nonfiction film holds—of entrenched power’s rapacious appetite for more power, and the destructive and fundamentally dishonest lengths to which its brokers will go to achieve their aims—are terribly important ones.

If you have a shred of idealism left, it’s hard to watch “Citizen Koch” without a mounting sense of despair and outrage over the influence that money has come to wield over modern elections. After watching the film, however, it’s reassuring to remember that sometimes — as in the case of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s recent primary defeat by a poorly funded dark horse — the little guy with an empty wallet can still win.

“…Citizen Koch is just as powerful [as Trouble the Water] and in some ways more incendiary and dangerous because it’s a virtual expose of what’s become of US politics and the influence of big big money on election campaigns …the movie just takes a hold of your throat and doesn’t let go for its 85 minute running time… It’s a raging, angry, rip-roaring, filled-with-righteous-fury-and-indignation indictment of big money in the U.S. political process, and so far, the best documentary of the year…maybe this documentary will finally get people again to take to the streets and just say “enough of this nonsense already, I’ve had it.”

The fight behind Citizen Koch, the documentary that the Koch brothers crushed… almost. Normally, when you make a movie, you don’t have to worry that your film’s villain will mess with you in real life. Darth Vader didn’t threaten the distribution deal for Star Wars. But for Citizen Koch, a documentary about money in politics after Citizens United, that’s exactly what happened. Filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal join us today to share their story, the story of their film—and how they’re fighting back.

On today’s Your Call, it’s our Friday media roundtable. This week we’ll have a conversation with Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, directors of Citizen Koch, a documentary about money, power, and democracy. The film looks at how Citizens United drastically changed how the country’s elections are fought and paid for. The filmmakers financed the film through Kickstarter after the Independent Television Service withdrew funding. How are Koch Brothers influencing the media and politics in the US? It’s Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.

In our documentary film, Citizen Koch, we look at the unlimited campaign spending unleashed by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizen’s United ruling. The title is intended as a metaphor for American politics today and the outsized influence wealthy individuals and corporate interests have in our democracy. But it seems that the billionaire industrialist and conservative activist David Koch is a fan neither of metaphors nor of critical scrutiny. And it seems that the financial power he wields is more ambitious than simply turning elections.

Brandon Rees, who helps oversee the AFL-CIO’s pension fund investments, is trying to convince Tribune (TRBAA) to shelve any sale of its eight daily newspapers, which include The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune.

In recent days, we have discovered that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups, the Justice Department went after journalists at the Associated Press and Fox News, and the National Security Agency has been aggregating records of our phone calls and online activities. Taken together, this behavior has all the hallmarks of a paranoid, totalitarian regime, regardless of whether President Barack Obama’s administration takes legal comfort by claiming cover under the overreaching Patriot Act.

A recent New Yorker piece chronicles how funding for the new film “Citizen Koch” was halted because of pressure applied on PBS from philanthropist and conservative businessman David Koch. Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, whose last film, “Trouble the Water”, was nominated for an Oscar, discuss their documentary investigation into conservative efforts to dismantle organized labor in Wisconsin — and the controversy over the Koch-tied funding withheld from their project.

We already knew of the Kochs’ efforts to buy Tribune Company, the parent of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, among other major newspapers. Then, last week, The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer took a thoughtful, in-depth look at the machinations that led New York’s PBS station, WNET, to pull from the air a documentary critical of David Koch, one of the station’s biggest funders. The story raises plenty of questions about the extent to which the public owns public media and the role of money in the arts and culture (see anything at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater lately?). But it also provides a rare intimate look at what happens when big money begets massive influence, often without a dime changing hands.

Filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal say plans for their new documentary to air on public television have been quashed after billionaire Republican David Koch complained about the PBS broadcast of another film critical of him, “Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream,” by acclaimed filmmaker Alex Gibney. Lessin and Deal were in talks to broadcast their film, “Citizen Koch,” on PBS until their agreement with the Independent Television Service fell through. The New Yorker reports the dropping of “Citizen Koch” may have been influenced by Koch’s response to Gibney’s film, which aired on PBS stations, including WNET in New York late last year. “Citizen Koch” tells the story of the landmark Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court that opened the door to unlimited campaign contributions from corporations. It focuses on the role of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity in backing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has pushed to slash union rights while at the same time supporting tax breaks for large corporations. The controversy over Koch’s influence on PBS comes as rallies were held in 12 cities Wednesday to protest the possible sale of the Tribune newspaper chain, including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, to Koch Industries, run by David Koch and his brother Charles.

Documentary filmmaker Tia Lessin is going on the offensive against any attempts by the Charles and David Koch to buy the Tribune Co. newspapers, weeks after some PBS stations plans to air her controversial “Citizen Koch” documentary about the Koch brothers drew controversy.

The Public Broadcasting Systems (PBS) guidelines state that member stations are responsible for “shielding the creative and editorial processes from political pressure or improper influence from funders or other sources.” In this New Yorker article, “A Word From Our Sponsor,” Jane Mayer details the situation that arose with WNET in New York, which was faced with filmmaker Alex Gibney’s Gates-funded documentary, “Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream.” The film focuses on 740 Park Avenue, the iconic home to concentrated wealth, and profiles some of its residents.

In recent years, federal funding for public broadcasting has fallen to record lows. Many broadcasters have turned to wealthy donors to fill the gap. In 2006, billionaire industrialist David Koch joined the board of WNET, New York’s PBS affiliate. Last fall, the station aired a documentary titled, “Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream,” which contrasted ultra-rich residents of the Upper East Side with their Bronx counterparts. In an article for The New Yorker magazine out this week, investigative journalist Jane Mayer chronicles the fate of that movie and another documentary produced for PBS. Diane talks with Mayer about the questions her article raises about the influence of big money on public media outlets.

“Citizen Koch,” a documentary about money in politics focused on the Wisconsin uprising, was shunned by PBS for fear of offending billionaire industrialist David Koch, who has given $23 million to public television, according to Jane Mayer of the New Yorker. The dispute highlights the increasing role of private money in “public” television and raises even further concerns about the Kochs potentially purchasing eight major daily newspapers.

More than a year after it played at the Wisconsin Film Festival, the documentary “Citizen Koch” will return to Madison theaters. The documentary, which looks at the effect of so-called “dark money” contributions in politics, and especially on politics in Wisconsin, will open in New York in June 6. Its distributor, Variance Films, said the film will travel to several cities from there, including opening in Madison sometime in June.

It took three long years to turn incredible footage shot from a flooding attic in the besieged Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans into a searing social commentary on what happens when a government turns its back on its own people. It took three long years to finally find the lens that helped turn conversation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina from pity to accountability. It took three long years for the floodwaters of Katrina to finally subside enough to unearth “Trouble the Water” amidst the Big Easy’s forgotten, abused and destroyed debris.

For those in George W. Bush’s inner sanctum who may wish that any evidence of Hurricane Katrina would blow out to sea, they’re out of luck at this year’s Oscars. If one film could inspire rage over the Bush administration’s handling of Katrina, the Oscar-nominated documentary “Trouble the Water” will do it.

Talk about being in the wrong place at the right time: Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rapper and self-described “street hustler” living in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, had just recently purchased a Sony camcorder in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina slammed into her city.

Like too many other residents of their predominantly African-American neighborhood, Kimberly and her husband, Scott Roberts, lacked the wherewithal to evacuate, so they stayed put. At first, Kimberly was happy to play the part of “interviewer,” pointing her camcorder at relatives and neighbors while asking how they would ride the storm. But then the rains came. Kimberly and Scott, along with a handful of others, wound up warily watching from their attic while waters from breached levees flooded the streets – to the point of submerging stop signs – outside their home. And throughout it all, Kimberly continued to operate her camcorder, instinctively capturing indelible images that are the heart of a powerful new movie aptly titled Trouble the Water.

Talk about getting what you need when you can’t get what you want: Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, veteran documentarians who had worked with Michael Moore on Fahrenheit 9/11, journeyed to Alexandria, La., in September 2005, hoping to make a movie about Louisiana National Guardsmen, newly redeployed from Iraq, who were charged with restoring order to post-Katrina New Orleans. But military officials proved uncooperative, and the documentarians were ready to go home when they ran into Kimberly and Scott Roberts at a Red Cross shelter.

One of the year’s most acclaimed nonfiction films, “Trouble the Water” benefits from a uniquely personal approach to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. More than most documentaries, this mosaiclike movie is made up of many pieces, and it’s considerably more than the sum of those parts. The veteran directors, Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, started off in one direction, emphasizing Louisiana’s National Guard and other stories; in the end, they shot about 200 hours of material.

I’m afraid that Hurricane Katrina ranks alongside the so-called War on Terror as a subject that weary Americans want to pretend to forget.

But “Trouble the Water” shouldn’t be missed. This documentary – inspired by the remarkable home-movie footage of Ninth Ward resident Kimberly Rivers Roberts, and partly shot in Memphis – is a tribute to human resilience and adaptability. The movie is certainly political (President Bush is shown muttering platitudes at the appropriately named El Mirage RV Resort and Country Club in Phoenix while the storm batters New Orleans), but it’s also existential: It chronicles a struggle to survive that transcends bureaucratic incompetence and speaks to the very nature of living in a hostile or at least indifferent and unknowable natural world, even in the 21st century.

“Trouble the Water,” along with Spike Lee’s extraordinary four-hour epic, “When the Levees Broke,” remains one of the most eloquent records we have of a tragedy that brought out some of the most impressively alive men and women in New Orleans.

Directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal revisit the American tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall a little more than three years ago. Their profoundly humanistic movie won the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, and it does something remarkable: It sells you on American resilience even as it reminds you, in unassailably clear-eyed fashion, that America’s stewards bungled the human response to a natural disaster so badly, with such covert and overt racism guiding the decisions made and avoided, you cannot quite believe the breadth of the damage.

Two political films this week, two very different experiences. While “Battle in Seattle” demonstrates how little can be achieved with first-rate resources and a roster of stars, “Trouble the Water” proves that a couple of gutsy amateurs with a home video camera can work wonders.

As I write, the hellstorm Ike is battering Texas. I hear of evacuation buses, National Guard troops, emergency supplies, contraflow, Red Cross volunteers, helicopter rescues. It is a different world from the world after Katrina hit New Orleans. Yes, there were noble rescue efforts, but too little and too late, and without enough urgency on the part of the federal (“You’re doin’ a great job, Brownie!”) government.

What a moment it must have been for documentary filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal when they first bumped into Kimberly and Scott Roberts in a shelter, in the days after the levees broke, when New Orleans’ Ninth Ward – where the Roberts’ had lived – was still underwater. LISTEN

The how-we-lost-our-home movies taken by New Orleans native Kimberly Roberts during Hurricane Katrina are the spine of “Trouble the Water,” a film that’s as harrowing for what Mother Nature can do as for what the U.S. government can’t. Or won’t. Shot predominantly from the attic of their rapidly submerging house during the worst of the storm, Roberts’ visual record gives us a palpable sense of impending doom. But it’s only after the Robertses – in the company of filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal – return to their battered city their crime-ridden neighborhood that the true, sustained and still-unresolved damage of Katrina becomes so terribly clear.

“Trouble the Water,” a stirring documentary on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, is more than a keenly dramatic look at how this country treats the poor and dispossessed. It’s also a film that was hijacked by its subjects. They saw an opportunity, they took it, and the grand jury prize at Sundance was the result.

Unlike Spike Lee’s “When the Levees Broke,” which attempted to reconstruct the events and deconstruct their larger meaning, “Trouble the Water” is less a postmortem than a potent dose of here-and-now. It is a first-person, real-time documentary, built not from archival news footage (though some does appear) but from amateur digital video captured on the streets of New Orleans by the subject of the film, Kim Rivers Roberts. One is hardly surprised to read reports of spontaneous emotional outbursts from the first audiences to see the film at the Sundance Film Festival.

Ms. Roberts is such a charismatic figure that she might have overwhelmed this movie. But Mr. Deal and Ms. Lessin have the big picture in mind, not just a personal portrait. Working with the editors T. Woody Richman and Mary Lampson, they have created an ingeniously fluid narrative structure that, when combined with Ms. Roberts’s visuals, news material and their own original 16-millimeter film footage, ebbs and flows like great drama.

And Lessin and Deal know that the best documentaries reveal politics through personalities. In the gritty, buoyant Kim they found a person who symbolized both the lower depths of urban life and the resilience, when faced with an impossible challenge, to rise to a level higher than flood tide. Maybe Kim, Scott and their crew were no angels before Katrina, but that doesn’t matter–because in Trouble the Water, we see the lives of the saints.

When the gusts of Hurricane Katrina started blowing and the news reports began dominating the airwaves, Kimberly Roberts, a local rap artist who was living in the Ninth Ward with her husband, Scott, picked up her video camera and documented the before, during and after of the storm, speaking to neighbors and giving a platform for their tribulations. “Trouble the Water,” directed by Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, tells the Roberts’ story, relying heavily on their captivating firsthand footage.

A star is born. Her name is Kimberly Rivers Roberts. Your never heard of her. Not yet. Roberts didn’t write or direct Trouble the Water, the behind-the-camera artistry in this wallop of a movie is handled by the extraordinary team of Tia Lessin and Carl Deal. Trouble the Water is a documentary, an unforgettable one…

The stories of outrage are innumerable. The call to 9-1-1 alone is enough to make you want to march on Washington again. Of all the bad news one can have delivered to them, imagine telling an emergency operator you’re drowning in your attic and her response being silence. This person, your only resource to help, on rote reads from a script that no longer serves any purpose, tells you that no rescue team will be sent. Yet Trouble the Water is not a list of grievances put to film. It is a heroic epic showing you what the human spirit can do when put to the test.

Hurricane Katrina may have driven off a large segment of New Orleans’ African-American population. But in one sense the deadly storm was a uniter, not a divider: The devil wind brought together much of the country in contempt of the Bush administration’s loose definition of humanitarian aid. Fresh as a slap, the outrage of Katrina’s mishandling comes flooding back in Trouble the Water, a documentary account so starkly surreal that at times it seems wrought from another century’s folklore.

Winner of the jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, “Trouble the Water” is a hybrid documentary–part amateur personalized reportage and to a lesser degree contextualized narrative–that shows the devastating effect of Hurricane Katrina and the malicious neglect performed by the U.S. Government against the storm’s survivors.

“…the superb documentary “Trouble the Water,” about Hurricane Katrina and its equally calamitous aftermath. One of the best American documentaries in recent memory, the film was directed and produced by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, a couple of New Yorkers who, like much of the rest of the world, were watching television in horror in 2005 as the natural disaster was quickly followed by a human one…”